American Immigration Control Foundation

Immigration “reform,” said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, is the “No. 1” priority for her department. The term “reform,” as used the Obama Administration, means amnesty for illegal aliens. Napolitanto also defended the recent decision of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to release illegal aliens held in detention.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin said on Sunday the so-called Gang of 8 on immigration reform could be a model for solving other issues in a bipartisan way.

“I think people who have given up on Congress would be encouraged to know there’s a real dialogue, bipartisan dialogue, and perhaps, just perhaps we can set the stage for a more positive dialogue when it comes to the budget,” the Illinois Democrat said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Among those released in the past week was Anthony Orlando Williams, 52, a Jamaican immigrant who spent nearly three years in a detention center in Georgia. “I’m good, man,” he said. “I’m free.”

Mr. Williams, in a telephone interview from Stone Mountain, Ga., said he became an illegal immigrant when he overstayed a visa in 1991. He was detained in 2010 by a sheriff’s deputy in Gwinnett County, Ga., when it was discovered that he had violated probation for a conviction in 2005 of simple assault, simple battery and child abuse, charges that sprung from a domestic dispute with his wife at the time. He was transferred to ICE custody and has been fighting a deportation order with the help of Families for Freedom, an immigrant support group in New York.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said that the decision of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to release hundreds of detained illegal aliens was “outrageous.” Boehner said he did not accept the excuse that an impending shortage of funds made the action necessary. Said the house speaker, “This is very hard for me to believe, that they can’t find cuts elsewhere in their agency.”

In medical isolation in South Texas, 100 miles or so from Mexico’s border, is a man who embodies one of U.S. health officials’ greatest worries: He is the first person to cross and be held in detention while infected with one of the most severe types of drug-resistant tuberculosis known today.

His three-month odyssey through 13 countries—from his homeland of Nepal through South Asia, Brazil, Mexico, and finally into Texas—shows the way in which dangerous new strains of the disease can migrate across the world unchecked.

Tuberculosis, an ancient, fatal airborne disease, has been treatable for decades with a cocktail of drugs. However, shoddy medical practices world-wide have enabled the bacteria to mutate and, in some cases, become all but untreatable. In recent months The Wall Street Journal has exposed widening TB drug resistance in hot spots like India, and shown that the U.S. is surprisingly unprepared for the growing global problem. Most U.S. cases of drug-resistant TB occur in people who were born abroad, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

WASHINGTON — The Homeland Security Department released from its jails more than 2,000 illegal immigrants facing deportation in recent weeks due to looming budget cuts and planned to release 3,000 more during March, The Associated Press has learned.

The newly disclosed figures, cited in internal budget documents reviewed by the AP, are significantly higher than the “few hundred” illegal immigrants the Obama administration acknowledged this week had been released under the budget-savings process.

The government documents show that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement released roughly 1,000 illegal immigrants from its jails around the U.S. each week since at least Feb. 15. The agency’s field offices have reported more than 2,000 immigrants released before intense criticism this week led to a temporary shutdown of the plan, according to the documents.

Democratic Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke told The Daily Caller that “no additional enforcement” is needed on the Southwest border, despite the U.S.-Mexico border remaining the “primary gateway” for moving illegal drugs into the U.S.

“Because we no longer have an active metric from DHS and border security can mean different things to different people, I just want to point to the facts. The safest cities in America are along the border. The border is safer than the rest of the country,” O’Rourke told TheDC Wednesday after a Border Advocacy Day event where participants argued that no more border enforcement is necessary.

The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee laid out a go-slow approach on immigration Wednesday, saying he doesn’t think having President Obama write a bill and demand that Congress vote on it would be successful.

Senators are racing against a White House-imposed deadline to write legislation before Mr. Obama sends his own version.

But Rep. Bob Goodlatte, Virginia Republican, said his panel will take time to hold hearings on each part of immigration reform and that he hasn’t decided whether to write a single broad bill, as Mr. Obama has requested, or to take it up piece by piece.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano had no part in a decision by underlings to release low-risk illegal immigrant detainees as a way to save money before the sequestration and was surprised to learn about it, Napolitano told ABC News in an exclusive interview.

“Detainee populations and how that is managed back and forth is really handled by career officials in the field,” Napolitano said.

Napolitano added that the release, which has been criticized by congressional Republicans, was poorly timed.

“Do I wish that this all hadn’t been done all of a sudden and so that people weren’t surprised by it? Of course,” she said.

When asked why the detainees were in jail in the first place, Napolitano replied, “That’s a good question. I’ve asked the same question myself … so we’re looking into it.”

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX) wants more information as to why Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is releasing illegal aliens being held in detention. ICE leaders have cited possible budget cuts as the reason. McCaul expressed concern that ICE did not provide proper notiication to congressional oversite committees before taking this action. He also said he wanted information on the individuals released.

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